Take Back Your Life!

Hi friends,

As a child, I had no problem speaking up. It came naturally. If something didn’t make sense to my little 6-year-old mind, I asked questions until it did. Now as I got older, I started to get in trouble for asking questions, for questioning the status quo. Sent to my room or sent to a classroom corner or sent to the unemployment line.

I got the message loud and clear: the best way to get along was to go along. I bit my tongue for ten long years. But this left me feeling crazy and out of sorts with myself. I decided the best way for me to get along was to not go along. In a society that values obedience, the easiest way to do this is to forget the outcome. If I dwelled on the possible outcomes – none of which might even happen – I became paralyzed with fear.

Let go of the outcome and you’ll get go of the fear. Is there something you need to say?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

There’s a great book by  rachel carson, the environmentalist, called “A Sense of Wonder.” In it, she says, “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.”

I’ve known for about 15 years that the march toward adulthood slowly beats the sense of wonder out of us. Prior to that I walked obediently along the beaten path, not questioning where it would lead me. I believed that I’d be happy at the next bend up ahead and when that didn’t make me happy, then it would be the next one. But can I tell you something? No matter how many bends i went around, I wasn’t happy. I became happy only when I took the path less traveled by. When I started to create my own route through life.

Being on my own path also restored my sense of wonder. I can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning and learn something new. Something I want to learn; I need to learn. That’s the problem with today’s generic life blueprint, it doesn’t take into account individual interests. How can we all want the same things in life? The real secret? We don’t. Making us into “want” clones deadens desire, deadens wonder.

How about you? Do you have your sense of wonder intact? If you do, how did you keep it or get it back?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

I get a lot of e-newsletters. 97% of them want to help me make more money. While I understand we all need money, I’m starting to wonder if this obsessive focus on making money actually drives money away from us? It feels increasingly desperate to me and I’m wondering if it feels desperate to money too?

Read an article a few months ago that said we are actually less happy than we were 40 years ago, even though most of us have more things and gadgets.

One of the books that got my life moving in a new direction sometime back, Do what you love and the money will follow, downplayed the money part. It will come if you really do what you love. Are most of you doing what you really love? Do you even know what that is?

It took me awhile to figure it out, but I love challenging the status quo. And there are lots of ways to do that — in my community, in my writing, in my life shops, in my conversations. When I’m in that zone I feel unstoppable, on top of the world. And the money has started to follow. Yet when I started doing what I love, making money was not my objective.

Let me ask you this. To capture your attention does it really have to be about the money? I’d love to hear why or why not. Also, if we didn’t need money to live and learn, what would you like to learn? What classes would you sign up for? What adventures would you take?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Do any of you have ideas for something new, something daring, something outrageous? Could be for a biz. Could be for a life adventure. Could be for a better world. If you’re following my posts with any regularity, then you know that I’m all for making more life. It may or may not have anything to do with making more money. That would be your choice.

Chances are good that right now, you’re probably sitting on a great idea. We like to think that only some people come up with great ideas. It’s not true. We all do. But just a few of us act on those great ideas.

Before I learned to think milky-way bit, I’d get a great idea and lightly toss it around. I’d mention it to a few friends, get a little pumped, then talk myself out of it and climb back down into my dark rut. Poof! A few months or a few years later, I’d read in the paper that someone else came up with a similar idea and went with it. It became a hit!

Has this happened to you with some of your ideas?

Frankly, I don’t feel we are encouraged to just “go for it” with ideas. All you have to do is look at the fear mongering going on in the news day after day to see that what we are encouraged to be is frightened — of everything.

Wouldn’t it be a more energized, upbeat world if we pursued our ideas full throttle instead of holding ourselves back?

What idea do you have that you’d like to run with? What’s stopping you? Keep digging down to find your real fear …

For anyone stopping by my site, please check out my life shop, “Think Milky-Way Big …” It’s an idea I had, that I’ve decided to go full-throttle with … This life shop is just the start!

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hi fun folks,

Recently, I read that children laugh 300 times a day and adults only 15. In my rebel book, that’s completely unacceptable. What’s going on here? Why do adults laugh so little?

The author of Laugh For No Reason, Dr. Kataria, says children laugh unconditionally whereas adults need reasons. Have we forgotten how to laugh? Have our adult lives become so dull and predictable that there’s nothing left to laugh at? Even TV shows have canned laugh tracks to let us know when we are supposed to laugh.

Maybe if adults laughed more they’d feel better. The American School of Laughter Yoga reports that laughter can be

• an age-inhibitor
• a pain reducer
• a stress buster
• a depression reliever
• an immune stimulator

Instead of giving us drugs, perhaps doctors should give us prescriptions for laughter?

Since I tend to laugh at the slightest provocation, needing a reason to guffaw feels alien to me. My third grade teacher actually put me in the corner for laughing! Looking back that made no sense. Punishing a child for what? Disrupting a bunch of ongoing non-laughter? The last kind of person tossed into a corner ought to be a happy one.

Want to try something unpredictable? Pick a day next week and keep track of the number of times you laugh and what you laugh at. I’m going to do it too. My new action step? Get my laughs back up to 300 a day …

Muse thx,

Giulietta

p.s. Check out the American School of Laughter Yoga at http://www.laughangeles.com & the book Laugh for No Reason.

Hey inspirational renegades,

I just love all the words associated with being a life rebel. We need more folks custom designing their own lives. It’s not even keeping up with the Joneses, it’s following the Joneses. Why do we do it? For the longest time I didn’t even question it. Talk about scary.

It feels good to step out of line, to stop following the pack that’s stampeding over some conformist cliff. Yes, it takes bravery at first, but soon enough it will become second nature or make that true nature, there’s nothing secondary about following your own heart.

Custom designing your own life can start small. Say “no” when you want to say “yes” or vice versa. This will free up time to do things that matter to you. It’s not selfish to enjoy your own life! The planet would be a much happier place if people filled their days doing things they loved. Lots of overt & covert anger out there. That tells me people feel powerless to custom design their own lives.

What one small thing can you do differently today?

Hey fiery folks!

I’ve always loved the Woody Allen quote, “90% of life is just showing up.” He makes it sound easy enough. So how come so few people actually show up for life? Yes, people come to work and family events and other “shoulds,” “musts” and “have to’s”, but how often do you show up for the things you really want to do, the physically, creatively or emotionally riskier ones that make you feel alive?

Want to see for yourself? Take a piece of paper and pick a recent week in your life. List the seven days of the week down the left side. Divide the top right into two sections: “shoulds/musts/have to’s” and “want to’s.”  Then fill in the columns and see what you come up with. If you’re coming up short on the “want to’s” side, take some time right now to figure out why.

As you’ve probably noticed, life goes by really quickly. Waiting until your 65 to start showing up for your life doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey friends,

Ever read a sentence that stops you in your “what am I doing” tracks? That happened to me yesterday in a book I’m reading by M. Scott Peck. He wrote that the elderly drive drive slowly not because they can’t see, but because they are not in a hurry. So much of life seems to be consumed with speeding to the next place, rather than idling where we are right now. Almost feels like a collective drag race.

I’ve noticed that people on the Internet who make a lot of money have set their sights set on making even more money. I just wonder where it all ends, when we reach the place we finally want to be, the place where we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “I’m satisfied. Time to enjoy my life as it is.”

If you’ve read my museletter then you know I’m all about helping people take back their lives. Once you find yourself in the nursing home bed, it’s going to be too late.

Here’s an idea. Next time you go out for a drive, go slow, even if the person behind you rides up on your bumper and starts beeping. If we’re all really driving to the end of our lives, why not take the meandering scenic route?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey fabulous folks!

I’m sure you’re all aware (or will be shortly) of the two main voices in your head, the nasty negative one that shouts stuff at you in the second person like, “You can’t do that” or “They’ll laugh at you if you get up and speak” and the powerful positive one, “You can bike up that big hill,” or “You are soooo funny!”

For many years, I had a terrible time with the negative voice. She showed me little mercy, speaking to me in a tone  I wouldn’t use on my worst enemy. The positive voice couldn’t get a good word in edgewise. And without the positive voice cheering me on I couldn’t get any life traction. I couldn’t go where I wanted to go.

That is until the day back in the 90’s I decided to make my karaoke debut.

The negative she-voice kicked in saying, “You’ll sound terrible. No one will listen to you.”

For some reason, I flat out refused to believe her and said, “You’re lying. I’m going no matter what you say.” All that day and into the evening, I kept challenging what she said. This allowed my positive she-voice to build me up. “You sound just like Bobby Gentry!”

Well, my first karaoke night turned out wonderfully! I had a few women come up to me in the ladies room and say, “I love your voice” as well as a guy who kept asking me to sing more songs. My beau at the time also cheered me on.

From that point onward, I began talking to myself more and more like a cherished friend. It’s made all the difference.

Want to join my “talk good to yourself” experiment? Please leave a comment congratulating yourself for something fabulous you’ve done recently!

Muse thx,

Giulietta

I’ve been hauling bag after bag of clothes and other stuff I bought at discount stores to the local charity. In some cases I’ve outgrown the look, but in most cases the lack of quality made the clothes hard to wear. After a washing or two, the shirt or pants just didn’t look or fit right. (Not that they fit 100% right to begin with. The cheap price made me overlook inherent design flaws.)

It struck me that I could have bought the one expensive shirt I really wanted, the one that fit me instead of the 25 poorly fitting shirts that I ended up with. I can now see that it’s more expensive in the long run to buy items I don’t really want just because they are cheap.

But that’s what we’ve become a nation of quantity-obsessed junk buyers.

It makes more environmental sense to return to the days of full pricing, when quality determined the likelihood of purchase rather than quantity.

How do you determine whether or not to purchase something?

Muse thx,

Giulietta